City of the Dead

by Rosemary Jones

  The valet shuddered slightly and responded, “Please don’t say anything about the master to me.” He gave a quick glance over his shoulder to the two guards stationed nearby.

  “No, no, of course not,” Gustin had no wish to get Stunk’s servant into trouble. “I only meant that I was quite impressed by your master’s gravity in the face of adversity.”

  The last was pitched loud enough for the guards to hear and the plump valet gave Gustin a grateful smile. “Secondus Marplate,” said the man, bowing slightly and indicating his round person.

  “Philious Fornasta,” said Gustin Bone, who’d always been fond of this particular persona. Philious had had numerous dubious adventures among the war wizards of Cormyr but, Gustin felt, always exchanged the social pleasantries with exceptional panache.

  “Have you been with Stunk long?” asked Gustin as he continued to examine the hall. He rather doubted that the shoe would turn up here or even downstairs where Sophraea was searching. If the curse was directed at Stunk, than the object tied to the curse probably had been placed in the man’s personal apartment to draw the dead to him. Which was one of the reasons that he had not objected to Sophraea searching in the basements below. She would be perfectly safe there and unlikely to run into any of Stunk’s more dangerous servants.

  “I came here following the master’s marriage to Lady Ruellyn,” explained Marplate as he trailed after Gustin.

  “If she’s a lady, wouldn’t he be a lord?” Gustin asked casually as he opened the doors of a small cupboard. Inside it, he found brushes, a small fire shovel, and a bucket for carrying out ashes, but no shoe.

  “Lady Ruellyn carries her own title by right of birth to a very noble family. They have a mansion in Castle Ward,” Marplate said. “I can say no more.” And then he proceeded to follow Gustin, gossiping as the wizard sniffed around for the missing brocade shoe.

  In the valet’s guarded opinion, Stunk was waiting to buy just the right title for himself, one that would increase his influence in Waterdeep. “As close to a mask as he can get,” Marplate explained and then looked as if he’d regretted suggesting his master was angling for a position of power in Waterdeep.

  “So, you can become a noble here if you have enough money?” queried Gustin.

  “You would be shocked at what you can buy in Waterdeep,” said Marplate quite sincerely.

  “Not after living here for a very short time,” replied Gustin cheerfully as he walked up to the guards flanking the door into Stunk’s chambers.

  “I have your master’s permission to set my protections throughout the house,” he told the guards, who looked doubtful. “Of course, I can always tell your master that I could not enter his rooms and therefore they are unprotected, a consequence of your actions.”

  The two guards stepped quickly aside. Gustin swept through the lacquered door, gesturing to Marplate to accompany him.

  In the suite of rooms that Marplate called “the master’s apartment,” Gustin found a dressing chamber filled with racks of luxurious clothing and shelves of shoes, but no dancing slipper. A bathing chamber, a small study, and an even smaller library, filled primarily with ledgers for Stunk’s various enterprises, also lacked any evidence of the haunting except the candles burning in every room, necessary because of the tightly drawn curtains concealing each window that they passed.

  “There’re always things looking in at night,” Marplate said as he checked the curtains, making sure the fabric overlapped at the edges, completely shrouding the room from anyone or anything looking in.

  A huge bed dominated the center of the last room, swathed in draperies that allowed the occupant to protect himself from the slightest draft. Gigantic feather pillows filled the top of the bed.

  Set neatly to one side was a food safe, a neat contraption of wood and perforated tin made to keep certain types of pastries fresh. Gustin had seen such pieces in bakeries and even the larger kitchens of noble houses in Cormyr. But he’d never seen one in a bedroom.

  “The master does a great deal of work in this room,” said the valet, obviously feeling the need to explain. “He often needs sustenance in the middle of the night.”

  “You must spend all your time sweeping crumbs out of the sheets,” Gustin said, flipping back the covers to peer under the bed. No shoe. He straightened back up, thinking hard. He was sure that the shoe had to be in the house and, most logically, near Stunk or in a room that Stunk occupied a good deal of the time. Of course, it could be downstairs, perhaps even in the room where Stunk held his audiences. The thought of going back there and searching under the fat man’s cold gaze made Gustin shudder.

  “There is a maid to change the linen every day.” Marplate straightened the covers that Gustin had rumpled. “The master is most particular about such things.”

  The wizard wandered to the far end of the room where a small table held a number of papers and a few personal items on a tray, like a comb and a bottle of men’s hair pomade. Gustin picked up the latter, pulling out the glass stopper to confirm that it was the thick, inky liquid sold in numerous Waterdeep shops with assurances that it would give even the oldest and grayest of gentlemen the luxurious locks of a young man. With a very slight smile at this evidence of Stunk’s vanity, Gustin replaced the bottle on the silver tray.

  Beneath the inlaid table, he spotted a slip of paper crumbled upon the floor, as if somebody had hurled it there in anger. He glanced back at Marplate. The valet was still fussing with the covers of Stunk’s bed, making sure the corners were absolutely straight. Gustin snatched up the note, glanced quickly at the signature, and tucked it in his tunic. He would read it later, someplace where nobody was watching.

  “Are you done, saer?” asked Marplate, twitching slightly when he saw Gustin so close to his master’s table.

  “Almost, almost,” Gustin said, circling the room once more. He noticed every time he crossed near the heavily draped windows, the valet flinched. He put one hand upon the crimson velvet curtains to draw them open.

  “Oh, there’s nothing out there,” Marplate said with a nervous start.

  “Perhaps I should look for myself.” Gustin twitched the curtains open to reveal long glass windows that opened onto a small wrought iron balcony with a planter filled with dead plants. Other than that, there was, as the other man had said, nothing there.

  Behind him, Gustin heard the valet give a relieved sigh.

  Ah, thought Gustin, this is where the ghosts must appear each night. Throwing his hands into the air and letting his head fall backward until he was staring at the brightly painted ceiling, Gustin cried, “I sense the presence of the dead!”

  Marplate let out a startled shriek at Gustin’s antics and then clapped both his hands to his mouth.

  Gustin slowly rolled his head forward until he was staring at his boots. “Each night, they come here, testing the fortifications of this house. Here they gather, looking in, attempting to reach the master of this place.”

  The valet let out a strangled whimper.

  “They rattle the windows, they shake the handle.” Gustin lowered his arms bit by bit and then tested the latch of the windows, rattling it slightly.

  Marplate moaned behind him, “Every night, it gets worse. And he won’t move out of this room. He always has me open the curtains so he can stare at them. He glowers at the dead and then mutters about how he’s going to kill whoever is doing this. And he makes me stay in the room so they all know what I look like too!”

  Gustin turned until he faced the man, raising one arm gradually to point at him. The valet quivered. Gustin tried not to smile. The deliberate gesture, the deepening of the voice, it worked every time, he thought. Everyone always thought that the worst magic came on the end of a grand gesture.

  He drew in a deep breath and stated, “You are also cursed.” Then added in a lighter tone, “But if you give me the key for this window’s lock, I may be able to save you.”

  With trembling hands, Marplate withdrew a ring of keys from
his tunic. He handed them quickly to Gustin.

  “It’s the littlest key,” the valet said. “He makes me go out there every morning and see if they have left anything behind.”

  “Do they?” Gustin thrust the key into the lock and turned it. With a distinct click, the window swung open. Gustin walked out on the balcony. It was completely bare as he had seen through the glass, except for the one pottery planter and the dead plants on their withered brown stalks.

  “The plants are always dead,” answered Marplate, staying well inside the bedroom. “I had the gardener replace them each morning. But today, the master said to just leave it.”

  “Nothing else?” Gustin asked.

  “Well, the first day”—the plump man squirmed a little and pulled out a handkerchief to dab at his bald head—“I found a shoe.”

  Gustin whirled around to look at him. “A gold dancing slipper, brocade and fashioned in antique style?”

  Marplate nodded. “It looked exactly as you described, saer.”

  “Fantastic! What did you do with it?”

  The startled valet pointed at the oblong planter sitting on the balcony. “I had the gardener bury it there. I did not think it would be lucky to bring it into the house.”

  Gustin rushed back to the planter, grabbing the plants by their woody stems and pulling them up. Dirt and dead leaves went flying as he flipped the plants out of his way.

  “Did Stunk know you buried a shoe here?” Gustin plunged his hands into the wet earth. He dug like a frantic dog into the dirt.

  “No,” Marplate’s voice sunk to a frightened whisper. “He would have wanted it displayed, like the painting in the hall. He keeps saying that he is not afraid of this curse. But I know a fetish when I see one.”

  “Really?” Under his questing fingers, Gustin finally felt the rough texture of the brocade slipper. He pulled it out from the planter. Stained with dirt, the little shoe looked ghastly, a proper grave good. “How did you know that there was a curse tied to this?”

  Marplate straightened himself with a sniff of superiority. “I was born in Waterdeep. Such things are not unknown here.”

  “Yes, I’m beginning to see that.” Gustin stuffed the shoe into his belt. “Interesting city, interesting citizens, I must say. But why didn’t you have one of the other wizards marching through here earlier remove it?”

  The valet blinked in surprise. “None of them ever came upstairs. None of them ever spoke to me. They just stayed downstairs and cast spells of protection around the doors and gates.”

  “Which must have helped,” Gustin said, as much to himself as to Marplate, “as the dead never got this past the threshold. Or maybe it needed someone living to carry it into the house.”

  The valet gave a worried glance at the shoe now dangling from the wizard’s belt.

  “Not to worry,” Gustin said with an airy toss of Marplate’s keys back to the man. “I’m taking this to where it belongs and that should end this curse.”

  “I certainly hope so,” said the valet, carefully stepping onto the balcony to replace the dead plants in the pottery planter.

  Gustin hurried out of the room and headed down the main staircase to find Sophraea. A crackle of paper around the middle of his chest reminded him that he still had the note lodged in his tunic. A turn of the stair revealed a niche with an antique statue. At least Gustin hoped it was antique and Stunk did not prefer his statues of naked women to be missing an arm and a head. Ducking behind the headless woman put Gustin out of sight of the guards at the top of the staircase.

  He withdrew the note from his tunic and read: “Saer: If you had any honor, which I have good leave to doubt, you would meet me as a man should, in an appointed hour and place. But send your bully boys against me one more time or threaten my home by any word or gesture, and I will horsewhip you as a cur should be chastised.”

  As he had noticed in Stunk’s bedchamber, the note bore the seal and the slashing signature of Lord Dorgar Adarbrent.

  Hurrying down the stairs, Gustin met Sophraea as she was hurrying up. As usual, she looked intent, as if the worries of Waterdeep settled on her slim shoulders. In Gustin’s opinion, she worried far too much these days. Things had a way of working out. After all, they’d gotten into Stunk’s house, the illusion spell was still holding (a bit to his surprise but he didn’t intend to tell her that), and they may very well be able to settle the dead by sunset.

  “I found the shoe,” Gustin told Sophraea as soon as she’d reached the landing halfway up the main staircase. “And I know who set the dead after Stunk.”

  “It’s Lord Adarbrent,” Sophraea said as Gustin pronounced the same conclusion at the same time.

  “How do you know that?” Gustin asked even as he handed the note over to Sophraea to examine.

  “Servants’ gossip downstairs,” she said, barely glancing at the note before handing it back to him. “Adarbrent has been championing the nobles after Stunk’s cheated them out of their possessions. I’m certain that Stunk’s plans to tear down parts of the City of the Dead made him even madder. So he used his cousin’s spellbooks to unleash the dead against Stunk.”

  “Oh,” said Gustin, a little disappointed that she hadn’t been more interested in the note and scarcely looked at the shoe when he indicated it dangling from his belt. It’s that being born in Waterdeep, he thought, it just makes them all so hard to impress. Especially a girl like Sophraea.

  She tugged at his sleeve. “We need to leave now,” she said, starting back down the stairs. “Hurry up.”

  “So now Adarbrent is slinging around spells,” Gustin complained as they went toward the front hall. Sophraea set an even quicker pace than usual and he had to stretch his long legs to keep level with her. “And Stunk’s valet knows a fetish when he sees one. Here I thought magic was a rare and unusual talent. An ordinary wizard doesn’t measure up to much in Waterdeep.”

  “Maybe Adarbrent hired a real wizard to read the spells out for him,” Sophraea soothed even as she sped across the hall. “However he did it, it worked. But really, we need to leave now. I had a little trouble downstairs.”

  Ignoring her last statement, Gustin pulled the brocade shoe from his belt. “I found it.” Maybe she hadn’t noticed it before. He was expecting just a bit more congratulations from her.

  “Wonderful,” said Sophraea, urging him across the hall with many nervous glances at the guards still stationed at the top of the stairs and near the doors.

  “But can we lock the dead back into the graveyard if we return the shoe?” Gustin mused and then answered his own question. “I’m sure this anchored the whole curse to Stunk’s house. If the valet had done what was expected, and carried the thing into the mansion, the dead would have been inside the walls days ago.”

  Two sets of guards were advancing upon them, one pair from the rear of the hall, the other pair from their posts at the great door leading into the courtyard. Sophraea glanced at them and hissed at Gustin, “Whatever the magical reasoning, we should talk about this later!”

  Outside thunder rumbled and the sky looked even darker. Gustin began to catch Sophraea’s panicky mood. Perhaps it was time for a rapid departure. But when the guards reached them, he said calmly enough, “We have set the protections that Lady Ruellyn requested. We will return tomorrow to collect our fee.”

  The men stared at him. Behind him, Gustin heard Sophraea gulp, as if she were about to say something and then swallowed it.

  Stunk’s guards marched to the great door leading to the outer courtyard. One pulled it open as two more arranged themselves in front of the wizard and his companion.

  “They will escort you to the gate,” said the most senior bodyguard. “Return in the morning for your payment.”

  Gustin nodded and followed the men out the door. “Keep your eyes on their backs,” he whispered to Sophraea. “Don’t glance around. That just makes you look nervous or afraid.”

  “I wouldn’t want to look nervous,” Sophraea agreed very sof
tly, flipping up the hood of her cloak so it concealed most of her face. “Especially after I left Stunk’s doorjack tied up in the basement.”

  “What?” Gustin almost tripped to a halt.

  “Keep moving.” Sophraea prodded him. “I don’t want to explain here.”

  The guards swung open the gilded iron gates. Gustin and Sophraea slipped through them. Rain began to pour down, but the pair hurried away from Stunk’s mansion, never glancing back until they reached the corner of the street.

  Then Gustin risked one look over his shoulder. Oblivious to the rain, Rampage Stunk had joined the cluster of guards at his gate. The fat man just stood there, watching them leave. Another guard came running up to the group, obviously bursting with news.

  Gustin pulled Sophraea around the corner of the street, shielding both of them from the stony blank stare of Rampage Stunk.

  With some urgency, Gustin asked her, “What is the fastest way back to Dead End House?”

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  Cutting through the City of the Dead was probably the quickest route to Dead End House, Sophraea reasoned, as she led Gustin back to the Mhalsyymber gate.

  She briefly considered going west to the High Road and taking that as far as Andamaar, but that meant twisting back through the little streets to Dead End House. Somehow, she didn’t feel as safe on the open streets. That strange emptiness in the North Ward, the eerie silence that felt more like midnight than the late afternoon, still persisted.

  For the first time in her life, Sophraea missed the usual clamorous crowds, the hustle and bustle of normal life in Waterdeep. She’d never complain again about Waterdeep’s crowded streets, she decided, or about having to slow her steps because of some group dawdling in front of her or having to sidestep some knot of gallants posturing to their peers.

  Right now, she had an itch between her shoulder blades, like something was tracking them. Only, whenever she risked a peek around the edge of her hood, she saw nothing but wet pavement and the black shadows that marked the entrances to the littler alleys. And she’d almost missed a turn already, nearly taking the Golden Serpent instead of Mhalsyymber’s Way.